Students who rely on school buses to attend consolidated high schools spend nearly twice as long traveling to and from school as students in schools that had not been consolidated, a survey conducted in West Virginia by researchers from the Arlington, Va.-based Rural School and Community Trust has found.
According to the survey of four counties in the state, two with consolidated high schools and two without, students who took a bus to school spent an average of 48 minutes traveling to school each way, compared with 23 minutes for students in nonconsolidated districts. The study also found that students with longer commutes participated in fewer extracurricular activities than their peers with shorter travel times did.
“Slow Motion: Traveling by School Bus in Consolidated Districts in West Virginia” is available from The Rural School and Community Trust.
